Amongst the buzzwords in digital marketing in 2017 was – unsurprisingly – social media, and its continued importance in your strategies online.
As 2018 is now solidly underway, do you know what worked well last year, and what can be improved upon to ensure your Digital Marketing strategy for 2018 delivers even more success?
Here are some pointers to ensure you’ve got your ducks in a row…
1. Know what channels work for you
Not all social media channels work for all types of businesses. Analyse the channels you used last year to see what produced the best engagement, reach and ROI.
Explore what other options there might be, and decide whether it’s worth expanding to include new channels, maintaining the ones you’re already using, or focussing more strategically on the channels that work best and discarding the rest.
2. Top grade audience data is vital
Understanding what works best means knowing firstly whether you’re reaching the best audience for your needs, and secondly whether that audience is engaging with the content you’re putting out there.
Use built-in tools like Audience Insights to gauge the efficiency of your targeting, and refine wherever possible to improve the quality of the people you’re reaching.
3. Point to point ROI assessment
In many instances the analytics on social media channels will give you a simple Cost Per Click or Cost Per Acquisition metric, that tells you whether the money you’re spending is being spent well.
Gaining a new subscriber or user who clicks through to your site at a cost of £20 may appear to be a costly CPC or CPA at first glance, but if that person spends £1000 with your business, you need to be able to track and measure that in a meaningful way to accurately understand the ROI.
4. Plan your calendar and content volumes
If your business has a seasonal nature – for example, fashion retail or holiday agency – plan the year in advance to see what events you can factor into your digital media strategy to maximise relevance to your audience.
And review, assess and plan your content volumes – is the amount you’re currently doing enough, too little or perhaps too much? Engagement statistics will help to guide you here – posts that get good engagement will invariably have a thematic link that you can identify, and replicate.
But be careful to keep your variety and interest levels high – and use your content to develop reader ‘buy-in’, rather than a hard sell which is of no actual value to a reader.
5. Align your Social Media content with your SEO planning
One key aspect of good SEO is page and domain authority. This measure is largely based on the number and quality of incoming links to your site. Your social media therefore plays a big role here, so ensure the quality, relevance and engagement devices remain of the highest standard.
If you need advice on how to develop or improve your digital marketing strategy, contact Realnet’s experts today on +44 1223 55 08 00.